Hand over the llama and no one gets hurt.

Or, why the postman doesn't stand a chance
in hell. So quit worrying, Spiff.

A few people have asked what this "snow tire" is
that I claim to be knitting. Right here.
Guess who won the llama fight?

Again, I come to you after two weeks of radio silence, thanks to a plethora of fly-bys the shit-fairy decided to rain down on my head. But I come to you bearing a llama snow tire, so hopefully you'll forgive me and keep reading. And yes, I'm knitting right off the bobbin. Hey, at least I bothered to ply it. Man from south of France is desperate for something to protect against the snow, which started to fly last week. So I'm * spinning, plying, knitting brioche stitch straight from bobbin, repeat from *.

So, for excuses, let's see, how many off-the-charts crap instances can one person take? Impossible deadlines and no edited material with which to meet these deadlines? Check. Stepfather who fell off his roof after his heart surgery now needing a heart transplant? Check. Kid who had been previously screened out of occupational therapy now screened back in and having a wicked hard time? Check. Discover new country puts you on a waiting list to address an urgent need for kid to have learning help? Check. For a whole freaking year? Check. Pay through the nose for private therapy instead? Check. Re-explain "pay through the nose" to father-in-law? Check. And let's not even talk about the demise of the laptop. The machinery is minor compared to the humans, but it's still painful, and no, no word from the laptop doc yet. I'm not hopeful.

On the not-so-off-the-charts-but-crappy-anyway scale, my postman is an idiot. So really, Spiff, you should hang around just to experience the level of idiocy, whereupon you will instantly realise that all suspicions of me and the guy in blue getting it on are about as likely as me flawlessly remembering for the rest of my life to turn the oven off. And you know how likely that is....

The other llama (I did admit to that earlier, right?) is still not here AND the guy nearly sent back my Alden Amos book because, you know, there were customs charges on it. And he didn't want to collect the customs charges. Which is his freaking JOB. Spiff, darling, besides the fact that I can't live one single day without your beautiful face nearby, the postman sent back my spinning book. 'Nuff said.

On the bright side, I got to have a pseudo-wish-it-was-Thanksgiving-lunch with Kate, who at last word was still pregnant and wondering if Baby thinks she's an elephant. It's going to be tough for this kid to see the blackboard from inside the womb, you know? I gave her belly a wee little lecture about how it is not nice to keep your mother waiting (despite the insanely early birth of Twinkletoes, I have a LOT of experience with a kid who moves at the speed of a herd of migrating pregnant turtles who suddenly realise that in Montréal, the roadsigns for north sometimes mean west, but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays). Then we ate a ton of roast chicken, which was not very good, but it was as close as we could get to Turkey Day, and then we went yarn shopping. And it wasn't my fault, Kate. It's a yarn shop. I spotted good yarn for you. Duh. You know you wanted it. And thank you for giving me even more to be thankful for. You're da bomb, babe.

And then, on the "there has to be a bright side to this" side...

Remember this lovely llama-down yarn I spun?
Damned good thing I just asked Spiff
if he really likes the colour or not.
He, um, hates it. (Please ignore hobbit hand.)

Major reboot with the Elven Love Note. Mainly, all that yarn I spun is in a colour my husband really would rather not think about, much less wear around his neck. We will not discuss the exact reference he thought of in relation to this colour. It's too painful.

A more blended version of this is the colour Spiff really wants.
You would think I'd be mad. But hey, I asked.
And a good thing, too. Solution? Pierre.

Normally, I would have ploughed ahead with the scarf, and then been pissed as hell that Spiff, for some reason, never wears the scarf I worked my ass off to create lovingly created with tender thoughts of my dear husband in mind with every stitch. In the midst of the shitstorm (because I tend to think of the worst case scenarios for everything when I am in the midst of a shitstorm), I thought, hmmm, maybe I should double-check with Spiff on this colour before I design, spin, and knit a whole freaking lotta love in the form of runes for him and then discover years from now that the reason he doesn't wear it is because he thinks the colour looks like birdshit.

My brother, on the other hand, loves to dress in birdshit brown, so, you know, nothing wasted here, we'll find a taker for that yarn, yet.

Dude. You would ask first before knitting, too.
This is a LOT of work, writing a lovenote.
Note the lighting. It's bloody late. I do my best lovenotes at night.

Lest you think that Spiff is being picky and I'm rolling over and playing dead, look: you wouldn't wear a scarf in a colour you hate either. And this is a love note. I want it to be in a colour he loves. I'm just glad I asked him about it before I got to the knitting process. Colour, we can change. We would prefer to change it before we have knit over ten thousand stitches in the colour that will not be worn, but we will happily change it if it means a visit to Pierre Thiran's basement in Outremont to select an obscene amount of roving in five colours. And I'm not kidding about my brother. He will be honoured to wear a birdshit scarf. I'll do nice, simple cables for him and he'll be so happy. And he deserves a little happiness right now. His shit-fairy appears to be working overtime, too.

Pierre Thiran to the rescue.
This is baby alpaca (on the left)
and superfine alpaca (on the right).
One single of each, plied, and Spiff WILL like it.

The careful readers among you might have noticed that I have just admitted to buying not two, but five colours. Poundage? Umm...I'll give you grammage. 3,500 grams. It was so cheap it could not be resisted, I tell you. Shut up.

The amazing thing (okay, one of many amazing things) is that Pierre is delivering the rest to my door. Because he felt bad that he didn't have enough of a couple of colours divided out into bags, and he didn't want to hold me up for too long. Only in Canada do you find a Belgian guy with Peruvian connections delivering alpaca to the door of an American ex-pat (whose French husband is probably going to give birth to une vache when he sees the sheer quantity of this stuff....)

Yep, you read that right. Alpaca takeout. Because I, um, cleaned him out of three colours. This is either a sign of my life suddenly turning ultra-heavenly (alpaca takeout! could llama be next?!), or me finally jumping over the cliff of "slightly reasonable on a good day" right into the abyss of "Alpaca. Next Door. Delivery. You'd Do It Too."

After I bought all this lovely stuff, Pierre asked me to demonstrate drop-spindling some of it, as it seems he's only really seen it done in Peru. The spinners he sells to are all wheel-spinners. So I just happened to have brought a spindle in my purse. (Oh, stop. I do so spin with it.) Talk about performance under pressure...I spindled and plied a few yards right there for him. I plied! Next door! Okay, a five-minute drive, but still...A guy who has taken a dyeing class at the local textile college and still has his little scrap of yellow dyed wool yarn he did himself, and gives you the number of the college so you, too, can learn "teinture." A person who devoted ten years to cutting out the middleman in Peru and getting the fibre money to the people who raise the alpacas, before he decided to continue to sell their fibre himself as a hobby after retirement. Now, that's the kind of fibre-seller you want to support. What a gem this guy is.

I had promised the bunny wool for this next post, and I did indeed get the red, and it is the most heavenly red red red that ever was. It is absolutely Lee Ann red. But it will have to wait a wee bit for another post, and hopefully I will be able to hold it together to post more soon. I have also received some amazing books, a giftie, and a bunch of other stuff I should probably admit to at some point or other...The books and a few other purchases have to do with the "s" word.

Unfortunately, not that "s" word.

A la prochaine....

P.S. Spiff, you are the Original Bright Side of the Story.

November 26, 2005 1:47 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (32)  | Print